When the writer Aldous Huxley was a schoolboy, his English teacher would task Huxley and his classmates with expressing ‘in our own words’ whichever work of Shakespeare was being rammed down their reluctant throats. The row of inky urchins would sit there scratching their heads, before translating ‘to be or not to be’ into ‘I wonder whether I ought to commit suicide or not.’

Decades later, Huxley lamented such a challenge in his essay Music At Night. In his view, it was a ‘silly exercise’. Attempting to express a work of art ‘in our words’, he wrote, ‘is necessarily doomed to failure.’ If you want to understand what a musician was trying to express in a song, for instance, then you have to listen to the song and experience it yourself. You can try as hard as you like, and your own words might come close, but they’ll never be the real thing.

The same applies to the football of Marcelo Bielsa.

I’ve written thousands of words describing the experience of following Leeds United under Bielsa, and Lord knows I’ll write thousands more. But, if I’m honest with myself, it’s a pointless endeavour. I can eulogise for the rest of eternity about Pablo Hernandez shotgunning the ball into the top corner of West Brom’s goal after seventeen seconds, and while watching replays time after time might still send goosebumps up my arm, the explosion that goal detonated in my brain and my body will remain lost in that moment forever. As The Coral mused on a song sharing the same title as Huxley’s essay: nothing feels right, except for the music at night. Especially when the music was being played under the floodlights at Elland Road, and the ball was at Pablo Hernandez’s feet.

That’s all well and good, but my pretentious bullshit wasn’t going to wash with the border patrol official when I landed in Las Vegas ahead of Uruguay’s Copa America quarter-final with Brazil. He didn’t believe that a lad from England would travel across the Atlantic on his own to watch soccer, let alone follow a South American country he had no real connection to. Fittingly, I couldn’t find the words to express Huxley’s writing or Bielsa’s football so I could attempt to explain, and knowing I didn’t really have the correct visa to be covering the tournament — even for a ramshackle football fanzine put together by a gang of idiots — I didn’t know what to tell him. All I knew was that only one of us had a pistol strapped to their waist, and it wasn’t me. After a few minutes of my sweating and stuttering, he eventually took pity on me, or lost interest, and allowed me to enter the Land of the Free.

If only I had the time or the poise, I could have explained to the official that there were plenty of reasons for a Leeds fan to be attending the Copa America. The day after landing in Vegas I met up with two fellow supporters, who’d also conveniently planned trips to coincide with El Loco’s arrival in Sin City, so we could watch Thomas Christiansen’s Panama face Colombia in the other quarter-final on Uruguay’s side of the draw. Christiansen has become an unlikely hero in Panama, as he so briefly threatened to become at Leeds when he introduced us to Samu Saiz and guided the club to the top of the Championship for the first time in thirteen years.

Panama’s progression to the knockout stages of the Copa America came at the expense of hosts USA, who suffered a late 2-1 defeat at the hands of Christiansen’s side and failed to make it out of their group after losing to Uruguay in their following game. From a Leeds point of view, it could hardly have worked out any better. Brenden Aaronson had a rest, playing just four minutes across the tournament ahead of his rehabilitation at Elland Road, while Tyler Adams aggravated an injury and Weston McKennie failed to convince Juventus he’s worth keeping around. It’s no coincidence I’ll always have a soft spot for Thomas Christiansen. Albeit by the end of that afternoon he was forlornly arguing with the fourth official as his team were losing 4-0, a few minutes before Colombia added a fifth. If the point of my trip was to feel like I was back at Elland Road in 2018, then I’d already succeeded. It was just the wrong month.

We left the bar and slowly staggered through the desert heart to the Allegiant Stadium, situated in an area of the city called Paradise. Once inside, the closed roof and aircon was a welcome escape from the sun. But the free wifi and view of planes taking off from across the freeway only added to the sense that, unless you’re daft enough to brave the temperatures outside, being in Vegas feels like a fever dream in which you’re trapped in a neverending airport.

As the game was about to kick off, there was a Leeds United reunion on the touchline, Raphinha seeking out Bielsa for a big hug. But there were no such niceties once the match began. Rather than the beauty of Bielsa’s Leeds vs Stoke, it quickly descended into a modern interpretation of the 1970 FA Cup final between Leeds and Chelsea. Both Uruguay and Brazil were content to kick and shove and scrap with their opposing player, whether the ball was near them or not. There were 41 fouls in total, more than any other game at the tournament, with Uruguay eventually reduced to ten men towards the end of the second half. Even as the two teams lined up on the halfway line after a goalless ninety minutes led to a penalty shootout, the players had to keep being separated, as if wanting to settle scores from the previous hour and a half of football with their fists rather than spot-kicks.

Like Leeds and Easter, Bielsa and penalty shootouts aren’t really made for each other. Two of his most heartbreaking defeats, with Newell’s Old Boys in the 1992 Copa Libertadores final and Argentina in the 2001 Copa America final, both came at the hands of Brazilian sides on penalties. This time it was different. Uruguay scored their first three. Brazil missed their first and third. A Uruguay miss left me panicking, wanting to pace up and down the aisle like Bielsa on the touchline, but when Manuel Ugarte converted to send Uruguay through to the semi-final, I jumped into the air shouting get the fuck in while Brazil fans headed for the exit and left Paradise in tears.

The relief of escaping Vegas and landing in Charlotte, North Carolina, lasted for a few days until the morning of the semi-final. Suddenly I couldn’t turn a corner without bumping into a new group of Colombia fans, and by the time I left a bar after watching England beat the Netherlands, the whole city appeared to have been coloured in with a yellow felt tip pen. To my shame, there were a few occasions when I was chatting to — let’s just say — some of the more serious-looking Colombia fans and they asked who I was supporting that night. “You guys, obviously,” I replied, hoping they didn’t notice the print of Bielsa on the back of my t-shirt as we parted ways.

If Uruguay pulled it off, it was all set up to be one of Bielsa’s most famous victories. Outside the ground was a carnival of Colombia fans, playing drums, dancing, singing. The air was thick with the smoke from streetside barbecues and burning pyro. Inside the stadium it wasn’t much different, a hive of yellow shirts swarming across all three tiers of all four stands, with sporadic blue shirts dotted around understandably trying to look conspicuous. I embraced the siege mentality, albeit remained under the veil of cowardice — whenever the crowd roared at Colombia winning the ball back or taking a shot, I couldn’t help muttering “fuck off” under my breath, making sure it was so quiet there was no danger of anyone else overhearing.

Once again, I’d travelled back to the wrong era at Elland Road. Rather than witnessing a new chapter in Bielsa’s folklore, this was to be filed alongside Wigan (H). With Uruguay’s goalkeeper making nervy errors under little pressure, Colombia soon took the lead from an early set-piece. Despite being reduced to ten men shortly before half-time, Colombia’s own ‘keeper lived a charmed life. Uruguay striker Darwin Nunez, playing like Pat Bamford with a ponytail, missed a hat-trick of chances with the game still goalless, while Luis Suarez was brought off the bench in an act of Izzy Brown desperation and hit the post.

I couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible. Before I’d flown across the Atlantic, Uruguay had scored nine goals across three matches. Once I arrived, bringing with me a suitcase full of Leeds United luck, they failed to score again. Bielsa was missing his Pablo Hernandez. “I think he can make me a better coach,” Bielsa once said of Pablo, and he wasn’t lying. Without someone with such class and composure to conduct the intensity of the orchestra arround him, Bielsa was relying on Flamengo midfielder Nicolas De La Cruz as his number 10. I once saw De La Cruz play for River Plate on a trip to Argentina five years ago and he stood out for all the wrong reasons, running the ball out of play at one point and being given two big shoves in the back by his own manager as if trying to wake him up. De La Cruz was a winger back then but has been transformed into an all-action attacking midfielder by Bielsa, impressing for Uruguay until he reverted to the frustrating presence I remembered when it most mattered. By the second half against Colombia, he’d been shunted back out to the wing. Again, I couldn’t help but feel slightly responsible.

At the full-time whistle, I darted out of the stadium underneath a hail of beers being thrown into the air by celebrating Colombia supporters. I left so quickly I missed Uruguay’s players jumping into the stands and to the defence of their families, who were being accosted by opposition fans, but walked straight into another scrap on the concourse as an elderly man in a Uruguay shirt bravely waded in and was immediately sent staggering backwards onto his arse by a left hook.

By now it felt like I was running away from everywhere I’d been. Bielsa remained in Charlotte for the third-place play-off against Jesse Marsch’s Canada. But the following morning I boarded a nine-hour Greyhound bus for Washington DC. I was hoping that Mateusz Klich could provide that elusive hit of LUFC romance, like a junkie chasing their next score.

Klich did all he could, the best player on the pitch as DC United came from behind to beat Nashville 2-1 to secure their first win in two months. He hasn’t changed. He strolled into the stadium wearing a flowery sleeveless sweater and sunglasses, failed to hit two practice shots on target in the warm-up or clear the first man from a corner, and quietly and skillfully controlled the game from midfield, shuttling from touchline to toucline so his teammates always had an easy pass to make to a player with the intelligence to give them the ball back in a better position.

It was vintage Klich. But it still couldn’t stir my soul as I so desired. While the stand shook beneath my feet as the DC ‘ultras’ bounced up and down after the winner, the ground was barely a third full, creating a strange, hollow atmosphere. As the American George Plimpton wrote of Stateside terrace culture: ‘We are a vociferous people, to be sure, and a good hand-cupped yell in support of the team of his choice will lift a man, red-necked, two or three inches out of his seat, and his neighbours out of theirs if his vocal effort is startling enough, but then invariably he sags back down when his breath is done and looks around for the hotdog vendor.’

It didn’t help that my mind was elsewhere, back in Charlotte, and the showdown between Bielsa and Marsch. The result, I told myself, was immaterial. A meaningless fixture was hardly going to change my opinion of either manager. But my heart sank as I was leaving DC’s stadium and overheard a supporter on the row behind me, who’d been watching the match on his phone rather than the football in front of him, informed his friend that Canada had taken a late lead and Jesse was “looking pumped!” Much to my relief, by the time I’d got back to my hotel Uruguay had equalised in stoppage time and won on penalties.

The build up to the two teams’ meeting had been dominated by Bielsa’s condemnation of the tournament organisers Conmebol after they threatened to sanction any Uruguay players involved in the altercations with Colombia supporters. Bielsa described Conmebol’s actions as a “witch hunt”. “The only thing I can tell you is that the players reacted however any other human being would,” he said. “(If you see) your woman or your mother or a baby are being attacked, what would you do?”

Bielsa was only just getting started. Having spent the previous two weeks laughing and joking with the media, even going so far as to look at the journalists while speaking to them, he exploded with rage in his final pre-match press conference, banging the table in front of him while calling Conmebol a “plague of liars”, referencing their insistence that playing surfaces and training facilities were fit for purpose when all evidence suggested otherwise. The training grounds were “a disaster”, he said, so much so that Bolivia had been forced to cancel sessions. “Since it was Bolivia, no one cares.” As the media officer tried to end the press conference, Bielsa concluded, “I know that my exaltation will make me unreasonable. They will say that I am a crazy madman.”

Marsch was next up, and had a tough act to follow. But like Bielsa, he had his own gripes with Conmebol to air. Mainly that Canada had been treated “like second-class citizens”, particularly by referees. This conveniently ignored the fact that in two of their three group games they had benefited from an opposition player being sent off, and their advantage of being placed in the weaker side of the draw that just so happened to give Argentina a much simpler route to the final that was played in Miami, the new home of Lionel Messi.

Much like his time at Leeds, Marsch was also blighting my time in America. I’d heard and read a lot of praise for Marsch’s passion and energy, yet I’d only seen him — while watching from a bar in Charlotte — unravel on the touchline in Canada’s semi-final defeat to Argentina, screaming at the referee as he walked off the pitch at half-time, then bemoaning every decision that went against his side in the second half. He made the same mistake in England, claiming his yelling at officials was some kind of psychological mind control that would benefit Leeds, only to be sent to the stands in our next game. As ever with Jesse, he hasn’t learned his lesson. But while Bielsa was derided for his tirade in his press conference, Marsch remains in his honeymoon period with Canada, successfully selling his Kool Aid and being lauded as a bright new hope with a record of one win in his opening eight matches in charge.

I’d hoped to have my view of Marsch challenged in the States when meeting with with local Leeds fans. After all, we can all be guilty of living in an echo chamber, and I’ve tried to question whether I was fair in my assessment of his time in LS11. But even the supporters who were converted to Leeds during our brief dalliance with the stars and stripes have grown tired of his shtick. As a fan called Will told me in Charlotte, “It was weird seeing Marsch with Canada and thinking, ‘He’s one of the reasons I started supporting Leeds. But he’s also a dick.’”

If I learned anything during my time in America, it wasn’t from Marcelo Bielsa, or Mateusz Klich, or least of all Jesse Marsch. It was from those Leeds fans I met and shared drinks with all over the country. The supporters’ groups in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh welcomed me with open arms and pints of beer, in bars adorned with Leeds scarves, signed Stuart Dallas shirts, and cardboard cutouts of Bielsa and Daniel Farke. A supporter in Philadelphia, Luke, proudly showed me the tattoo on his calf of Bill Ayling’s aborted cartwheel attempt at Wolves, the ‘SBOTOP’ sponsor on Ayling’s shirt replaced with ‘SBOFLOP’. Unlike the strange Twitter profiles with Weston McKennie avatars that exist permanently online, these fans live and breathe Leeds United through every kick of the season, organising meet-ups at ungodly hours of the morning to watch every match together, forming their own little communities across the length and breadth of the States, and saving up thousands of dollars to make the pilgrimage to Beeston.

It was telling how they all felt Leeds perfectly represented their hometown, wherever that may be. Leeds is the ideal team to support, I heard time and again, if you’re from Buffalo, or Philly, or Pittsburgh, or Tennessee. Whatever it is, there’s an authenticity to Leeds United that resonates around the world, condemning hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people to a lifetime of frustration and angst and, however briefly, if only for fleeting moments, sheer jubilation. How the fuck could you support any other club?

By God! What a terrible revelation! I felt like Hunter S Thompson after attending the Kentucky Derby, aiming to caricature the decadent and depraved, only to look in the mirror after a week of debauchery and realise his own face was the sight he’d been looking for all along. I’d travelled thousands of miles, visited five different cities, and exhausted my savings hoping to relive an era that has been and gone. All I discovered was that the music at night emanates from a small corner of south Leeds, played by a random assortment of eleven people in white shirts, expressing themselves in a way we’ll never be able to replicate ourselves, while we’re both blessed and cursed to experience every second alongside them. ⬢